Commentary by Michael Wade on Leadership, Ethics, Management, and Life

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Phone Upgrades

Cultural Offering has a rant on phone upgrades.I can identify with it, but only up to a point. My cell phone is, by modern standards, a Korean War model. It's very basic. I can't get email. I never text-message. It can probably be used as a bottle-opener but I haven't tried. There are days when the thought of using it as a hammer seems plausible.Truth be known, I hate talking over the phone. Give me face-to-face conversations, email or good old fashioned letters. People who feel compelled to talk while driving are a special mystery to me. Most of those calls are probably the equivalent of tweets - "I am now pulling into the driveway" - and will be utterly unnecessary within a few minutes.The sole reason for my eventual upgrade will be the ability to check and send email. Having just written that, I now need to reconsider. Just how connected must one be?

4 Comments:

Avoid it at all costs. If it weren't for the need to text my children (two are diabetics and I consider it a valuable feature to text: "blood?" and get a "134", or "220" back no matter where they are in the world.

If, however, you do decide to make the leap, let me know and I'll drop you text.

Michael, Michael, Michael. I am going to have to drag you kicking and screaming into the 21st century, aren't I? For $99, you can get a phone that looks a lot like your Korean war model, and which gets email whenever you want. Smart phones do a whole lot more, but you don't HAVE to use the other features, if you don't want to. I used to tell my tech seminar participants who asked why I had all my tech, since it would always be interrupting me, and an annoyance, that I knew the most important thing about all my tech. Where the off switch is. :-)